WOW64.DLL Access Violation on Windows 7

[Petrus Vorster]

Hi All

This is not important and more out of curiosity.

My work PC is still on Win7 and anything I run ,made with Winfbe will sometimes get a Warning from our Anti-virus (Trend) that the program had an Access Violation to WOW64.DLL and was blocked.

However, I am not accessing that DLL, and the Anti-virus doesnt seem to block the workings of my program either.

Other than the infrequent pop-up, nothing seems to be limited or affected by that warning.

Our IT guys says they have no idea even what that DLL does or how it affects my little tools. I get that same violations somtimes on opening Outlook.

Just curious if someone may know.

Regards,

Peter

[philbar]

Hi Peter,

I'll defer to people who are more knowledgeable than me, but AFAIK, WOW64 (Windows on Windows) is the subsystem that allows 32-bit programs to run on the 64-bit OS. As you can imagine, system calls, device drivers, etc. require some translation.

As for why the AV (sometimes) blocks your program, it's anybody's guess, but false positives are always a problem. I remember a couple of threads on the FB forum complaining about one AV or another blocking innocent FB programs. We have a couple of Trend Micro users here; I might try some WinFBE programs with them and see what happens.

Phil

[Bumblebee]

Windows 10 virus scan has blocked FB programs and other executable files. So many false alarms I had to exclude that folder.

[Petrus Vorster]

Thank you.

Interesting indeed.

-Peter

[Paul Squires]

I have noticed that sometimes antivirus will flag exe's that do not have fully complete manifest files. I am pretty sure that WinFBE generated manifest files should be complete enough and,"should", pass virus scans.

[philbar]

As I think more about it, it seems like "Access Violation" is not a message that you usually get from the AV. It happens because Windows has marked certain files/folders and certain chunks of memory off-limits to user programs. When you try to access those things, Windows throws an error. If your program traps that kind of error, it might work around it. Otherwise, it gets clobbered.

So now I know even less about your warning message than I did yesterday.

Given that it also happens when you run Outlook, a scan with the free version of Malwarebytes wouldn't hurt.

[Bumblebee]

Windows also doesn't like packed executable files. UPX has led to alerts in the past.